Posts tagged as:

Branding

How to develop your brand architecture

Branding is a bit of a mystery for many small to mid-market (SMB) companies. There are many opinions and methods as to how best approach it.

Top creative agencies have their own “proprietary” methods for crafting brand strategies. They have to, in order to position themselves against competing agencies. They use cool-looking graphics: circles, triangles, and flow charts to illustrate attributes, values, personality traits, and promises.

Many SMB companies never bother to craft a brand strategy, instead allowing the market to brand them, for better or worse. Deep down, SMB marketers know they should be putting more effort into branding, but many don’t know where to start.

The good news is, if you were to break down most agencies’ proprietary branding methods, you’d find many similarities.

If you’re one of the 90% of companies that don’t have the budget to hire top agency talent for your branding, don’t worry; with a little elbow grease and a good plan you can create your own brand strategy. Solving the branding black box just takes a little learning and a strong commitment.

Brand Architecture is Your Brand Strategy Foundation

The key to your entire brand strategy is your brand architecture. Your brand architecture sets the foundation for all the other components of your brand, and aligns your brand personality traits, your means, your promise, your story, and your visual and operational requirements into a single unified structure.

Brands play on our emotions, so your brand architecture should uncover the specific emotions around which you might build your brand.

To create your brand architecture, follow this five step process:

1. Start by listing each of your product/service features. Then, list the benefits of each.

A feature is an element of what something does or what it is. For example, a car’s features may include a ski rack and an upgraded stereo system.

A benefit is a positive result that the feature delivers.

2. Now focus on the benefits. For each one, determine whether it’s functional or emotional.

A functional benefit is directly related to the functionality of the feature. Example: An upgraded stereo provides higher-quality sound.

An emotional benefit is one that evokes a feeling or emotion. Example: An upgraded stereo might make the user feel like a rock star.

3. Next, review each feature and benefit individually, and determine its level of importance to the market. Assign each to one of three categories:

Expected: These are basic and expected; a customer won’t buy without these features or benefits. Every product/service in this category must offer these features.

Adds value: Not expected, but most customers probably won’t purchase based on this factor alone. Nevertheless, it helps differentiate your product/service from those of your competitors.

Will buy: Customers will choose you over your competitors based on this feature/benefit alone – it’s just that valuable.

4. Now, rank your features and benefits. Brands play on our emotions—even B2B brands. The strongest brands are built around emotional benefits. Use this ranking system:

Features that are expected = 1

Features that add value = 2

Features that will buy = 3

Functional benefits that are expected = 4

Functional benefits that add value = 5

Functional benefits that will buy = 6

Emotional benefits that are expected = 7

Emotional benefits that add value = 8

Emotional benefits that will buy = 9

5. Few brand architectures are built around features, but by including them in the rankings, we emphasize the importance of focusing on benefits and, more specifically, emotional benefits that cause people to desire your offering on a visceral level. The final step is to identify the emotional benefits that will become the core of your brand strategy.

Typically, you should focus on the highest rankings for the architecture of your brand. Evaluate all of those with a ranking of 6 or higher. You might decide to include a few functional benefits with the emotional benefits.

Carefully consider the functional or emotional benefits you select for your brand architecture. You’ll spend a lot of resources to convey these to the marketplace, so test them amongst your team and your market if you’re unsure.

After you’ve decided on your brand architecture, you can begin thinking about the other components of your brand strategy: your brand personality traits, your means, your promise, your story, and your visual and operational requirements.

If you’d like to use our branding tools to help you complete this process, you can access them from our marketing management platform.

{ 0 comments }

Business brands: Same impact as consumer brands?

in Branding

Business brands evoke emotional response How important is branding to a B2B company? A German radiologist, Dr. Christine Born, has presented research that shows that business brands can cause the same type of brain activity as consumer brands.

Kevin Helliker’s article about the study, “This is Your Brain on a Strong Brand: MRIs Show Even Insurers Can Excite” ran in The Wall Street Journal on November 28.

The study was the first ever to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to research the impact of brand recognition on the brain. While it’s a small and yet-unpublished study, it raises a few intriguing points:

Big brands produced brainwaves in parts of the brain associated with positive emotions.
Smaller brands produced brainwaves in parts of the brain associated with negative emotions.
None of the brands in the study activated the decision-making part of the brain.
Brains responded just as powerfully to strong insurance brands as to strong automotive brands.

Consumer research has linked the importance of brand recognition in consumer markets for years, but few have believed that business brands have the same impact. Can General Re, Xerox or Salesforce.com really evoke the same emotions to a business buyer as Starbucks, Porsche or Nordstrom does for consumers?

While many business leaders still debate whether B2B brands matter, this study will certainly provide more evidence that they do. And I’m sure we’ll see more research in this area.

After all, in the B2B world, the quality of personal relationships is often the key to closing a deal. And what is a great relationship based on? Trust … execution … followthrough … personal dynamics. All traits that define the very essence of a brand.

A brand is a promise that your company makes to your customers. It’s about an experience your customers have when they interact with your organization and your products and services. And in B2B, you can convey your promise and experience through your sales collateral, your website, your trade show presence, the way you answer your phones, the way your products and services deliver, and how your sales team builds relationships with prospects and customers.

If you’re ready to improve your company’s branding, you don’t necessarily need to run out and launch a massive national branding campaign. Instead, look at your own brand personality and how well you convey it in everything your company publishes and does on a daily basis. Here are a few articles from our blog that can help:

And here’s a terrific white paper about B2B branding at Interbrand’s Brand Channel website. It’s written by Kevin Randall of Moveo Integrated Branding, and it covers a lot of ground on why B2B brands are important with meaningful real-world examples.

{ 0 comments }

Branding and copywriting: One word can make a difference

in Branding

Differentiate yourself In “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding,” Al and Laura Ries tell us that to differentiate your business, you should create a new category and then own it in the mind of the customer.

Don’t allow the market to clump your offering in with everyone else, they say. Instead, define a category that’s entirely new, then trumpet your company as the first and leader of that category.

Now Seth Godin points out a single word that can help you reinforce the idea that you’re not like everyone else. That you’re different. Better.

Instead of being “a something,” become “the something.”

One word makes all the difference, doesn’t it?

So if you’re trying to build a brand and truly differentiate yourself, take a look at all of your messages. Look at your website, your presentations, your sales literature, and what you pitch on a daily basis. Can you change “a” to “the?”

If not, can you change that “something?”

Says Seth: “I don’t think it’s a trivial distinction. In fact, I’d argue that it’s worth an enormous amount of your time and your budget to focus on becoming the.”

Here’s his full post.

{ 0 comments }

How to develop better messages

How do you respond when someone asks “what does your company do?”
Do all your team members answer the same way?
And is your response compelling so the listener wants to learn more, or do you sound like everyone else (blah, blah, blah…)?
“Messages” are written and verbal statements that quickly describe what you do and how you’re [...]

Read the full article →

How to build a brand with personality

We often talk about the importance of branding in B to B marketing. Every time you communicate with prospects and clients – on the phone, the web, in a campaign or a meeting – you have a chance to reinforce your value proposition and differentiate from your competitors.
But it’s difficult to create a brand personality [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries